Life, the director's cut

"I'd never analyzed what a friend meant before this," Unknown White Male filmmaker Rupert Murray offers over the phone. The "this" of that sentence is a mysterious brain injury that affected a complete personality change in a man he labels "a mate, really," from their good-time "pubs-and-clubs" era in their late teens in London. The name of that man, the star of Murray's documentary, might seem irrelevant in a way, because the expatriate Brit, a stockbroker-turned-photographer previously known as Doug Bruce, lost all traces of himself after the unknown accident–affliction occurred.

When Murray heard about his friend's condition, he took up the chance not only to get to know Bruce all over again but also to assist Bruce in getting to know himself, which must have been an awkward situation, considering. Though Bruce didn't necessarily re-up his friendships with everyone from his past, he got along well enough with Murray to give him an all-access pass to his extremely vulnerable brain.

Murray covers what one might consider the money-shot moments as Bruce reunites with the man formerly known as his father, the woman formerly known as his sister, the apartment formerly known as his loft, but the real texture of this film lies in just how cold Doug Bruce appears toward his former friends, family, and self. The photographs of his own childhood don't particularly seem to move him, but are, rather, instructive. "He's found out an awful lot about who he was in the past from home movies, seeing pictures," Murray says. Should it be a surprise that Bruce doesn't seem too enthralled with the person he left behind? It's as if, as director-editor-cameraperson of his new "self," he can run it through Final Cut Pro until he comes up with something he really, actually, likes. (Susan Gerhard)